With today's document workflows, the creator of a document often does not have control over the final appearance of the document. For example, documents can be posted on and retrieved from the web or can be emailed to their audience. The individual which has obtained or received the document selects the printer or display device on which the document is going to be displayed. Unfortunately, the document may not be properly formatted for printing or display on the selected printer or display device.
To resolve this problem, automated document-layout systems have been developed. These prior document-layout systems have relied on the use of fixed algorithms and style sheets to determine a document's layout. Although these types of document-layout systems work for some applications, the result is rigid, inflexible and thus limits their use to certain classes of document and types of layout. Additionally, these types of systems tend to make all documents look alike which is not always desirable. To that end, a genetic algorithm approach to layout has been developed, enabling varying layouts to be automatically generated. For such a genetic algorithm process, a series of mutations is applied to a layout in order to evolve it to an optimal layout. However, two challenges remain in current systems that apply such mutations. First, the mutation algorithms must be programmed beforehand, and then only those that have been programmed can be applied. This is a difficulty since it is not always possible to anticipate beforehand and create algorithms for all of the possible coordinated mutations that might be valuable in an automated document-layout scenario. A second remaining challenge in applying mutations for automated layout is knowing which mutations to apply, and in what sequence to apply them. The process detailed in the present invention addresses both of these challenges.